PG | 1h 44min | Fantasy, Romance, Comedy | 1946
At a critical moment in “Stairway to Heaven,” 1946 (later titled “A Matter of Life and Death”), a character quotes Sir Walter Scott and says, “Love is heaven and heaven is love.” Around that foundational belief, screenwriter-producer-director duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger build their memorable comedy-fantasy film. They then illustrate, as comically as possible, that in spite of this aspirational common ground, the earth is nothing like heaven.
A World War II British pilot, Peter Carter (David Niven) radioing for help as his plane burns up midair off the English coast, manages to connect with a Boston-born radio operator, June (Kim Hunter). June is horrified that his crew members are dead and that the parachutes onboard, including his own, are ruined. Charmed by his lively banter in the face of death, she tries to talk him through to safety, but he ends up bailing out in a fall that would’ve killed any other man.
For Heaven’s Sake
Powell and Pressburger push the limits of credulity, creating a fantasy world that’s a wand wave short of an outright fairy tale. But their narrative, choked with symbols from science, medicine, law, philosophy, sports, war, and the arts, flits just enough between serious and silly to keep things engaging.The narrator points to the universe to show how insignificant humans are in the vast scheme of things, dwarfed as their puny planet Earth is by giant suns, stars, clouds, entire solar systems, and galaxies.
The film uses the symbols of the brain (or its philosophical equivalent, the mind) and the heart (or its equivalent, the will) to distinguish between merely living and living a life of love. It shows how imminent death lends urgency to what really matters: love, and therefore a will to live.
Moments from certain death, all Peter can think of is messaging his mother and sisters to reassure them that he loves them, and dreaming about meeting June at some point in the future.
Dr. Reeves, on the other hand, loves sports (table tennis) and enjoys riding his motorbike at adventurous speeds. He respects the discipline of medicine and uses his understanding of neurology to tie Peter’s symptoms to its underlying causes. He also loves the science of light. There’s a stunning scene where his darkroom and lenses, apparently miraculously, illuminate (through clever blocking and reflecting) what’s happening right outside.
Indulgence, Irony, or Wit?
Some scenes overflow with irony and wit, without which the story wouldn’t have held together on screen. Exchanges between heavenly beings and earthlings hint at the irrelevance of political affiliations, language, race, color, sex, and religion when the human body has crossed the time-space barrier.Powell’s cinematographer Jack Cardiff and editor Reginald Mills are ambitious and creative. They grippingly present dream sequences and scenes of a plane crash, a motorbike in driving rain, or a monstrous escalator going up into heaven, past imposing statues of philosophers and statesmen. There’s even an “insider” shot of Peter’s drooping eyelids as he falls unconscious in the operating room.
A military officer checks in at heaven’s front office and gestures to his senior colleagues, telling the usher, “Officers’ quarters, of course,” only to be smilingly reminded that he’s left earthly hierarchies (and privileges) behind. “We’re all the same up here, Captain.”
Cinematic Turnaround
Despite the creativity, neither cinematographer nor editor allow the action to overwhelm the actors, or allow the set design (no matter how impressive) to overwhelm the script. Cardiff shoots the fantastical sequences in heaven in black-and-white and those in the real world in color. It is the reverse of what works in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939), where colors run riot in dreams but are a tempered black-and-white in the real world.Niven and Goring provide a fair bit of mirth with their verbal repartee, leaving Livesey to deliver one of the film’s more serious messages: “Nothing is stronger than the law in the universe, but on earth, nothing is stronger than love.”
Trouble is, in this film, love is obvious only to some of us; the rest of us need “proof,” and for some, no amount of proof is enough. It’s why the film elevates philosophers, poets, and artists above practitioners of science, law, and medicine. The former see with different eyes and hear with different ears. They see “beyond,” rather than merely see.
A Recent Twist on the Plot
Trivia fans may be pleased to know that Powell’s 20th-century film finds an uncanny, if amusing, echo in a 21st-century film. In “Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011), intelligence officer Peggy Carter comforts Steve Rogers over the radio from a distant comms station, as he faces the inevitability of his burning aircraft crashing into the Arctic Ocean.Only this time, 65 years later, the roles are reversed. This crashing pilot is American, and this anxious radio officer is British. This Carter is a woman whose first name begins with the letter P, while this pilot (played by Chris Evans) is the one who’s Boston-born!
